Baltimore County judges face challenger in unusually contentious race

A Baltimore County judicial primary election has become unexpectedly contentious, with negative mailers, inflammatory Facebook posts and appeals to “law and order” appearing in a normally staid race.

The race to choose four Circuit Court judges — positions that appear on both parties’ ballots under the heading “judicial” rather than with a party affiliation — has highlighted the process of trial judge elections, which some say politicizes what should be a nonpartisan position.

“I agree with people who don’t think there should be judges running for election,” Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger said. “It takes a job that’s very nonpolitical and for a very brief period of time makes it political.”

Shellenberger, who supports the sitting judges, emphasized the value of the “double process” of vetting by both a commission that includes a member of his office and then the governor.

Four sitting judges, three appointed by Gov. Wes Moore and one appointed by then-Gov. Larry Hogan, are facing challenger Rob Daniels, an assistant attorney general who has said he would be the county’s first LGBTQ judge and derided “Baltimore City crime-fighting policies.”

“Some people believe I am burning down my own career,” Daniels said, “which is just insanity to think that someone exercising their constitutional right to run for public office would be doing that.”

The sitting judges, Michael Barranco, Marc A. DeSimone Jr., Patricia DeMaio and James Rhodes, are running as a single slate. DeSimone, DeMaio, and Rhodes joined the bench in January 2024, while Barranco was appointed in September 2022. Judges serve 15-year terms.

To join the bench, judicial candidates apply and undergo a grueling vetting process that involves interviews with bar associations and a judicial nominating commission, along with a detailed questionnaire.

The nominating committee sends names of qualified candidates to the governor, who appoints judges before they face voters in the next election.

Baltimore County voters can select up to four names in Tuesday’s primary.

The question of how much say to give voters was brought into sharper focus this month when the Maryland Supreme Court removed Prince George’s County Circuit Judge April T. Ademiluyi from her position, citing “egregious” misconduct. Ademiluyi also ran as a challenger to the slate of incumbent judges.

Rhodes cited the Prince George’s upheaval as an example of what happens when judges are elected without proper vetting but said it’s still important for the voters to have a say.

The process for choosing appellate judges in Maryland is different: Outsiders can’t enter their names for the ballot, but voters can choose whether or not to retain a sitting judge.

“You can’t just get someone who enters because their last name appears higher than the other judges on the ballot,” Rhodes said.

Daniels, a former prosecutor now working as a civil litigator at the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, has criticized the judicial nominating process, which he has now been through three times, as “flawed” and “subjective.”

“It doesn’t select lawyers who are necessarily known to the local bar, the local attorneys,” he said.

The Maryland State Bar Association supports the retention of all sitting Circuit Court judges, including the four in Baltimore County.

“These judges have been evaluated, selected and appointed by the Governor because of their judicial merit,” the bar association said on Facebook.

The sitting judges slate sent out a mailer featuring a woman throwing up her hands in confusion, accompanied by text detailing Daniels’ past financial troubles. “Rob Daniels claims to have the character to be a judge. HUH???” it read.

Daniels said on his Facebook page that the mailer, which listed his two foreclosures and a bankruptcy amid the mortgage crisis, proved that his opponents “hate poor people.”

Also on Facebook, Daniels has described two of his opponents as people who “have pulled guns on other people and who have actively opposed law enforcement for most of the last decade.”

Rhodes said the gun claim stems from an encounter where a man threatened his son with a large pipe in a road rage incident, but the man swore out charges with a court commissioner saying Rhodes threatened him first. Rhodes said he is licensed to carry a firearm.

Court records show the man was convicted of second-degree assault in 2021 in connection with the incident. Rhodes said he had the complaint against himself expunged.

Daniels also accused DeMaio, a former administrative law judge and prosecutor in the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office, of being “anti-police” and sought to link her unfavorably to former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby. DeMaio was deputy of operations and deputy of the major trial division under Mosby.

“Did I agree with everything that was done? No. But in my position, you enforce the policy,” DeMaio said of her time in the office.

She said she led joint command meetings between police and prosecutors while at the state’s attorney’s office.

DeSimone, like Daniels, also applied multiple times to be appointed as a judge before he was chosen. A longtime public defender and professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, DeSimone said he never considered running in an election to become a judge.

“Who am I to say that I’m superior to the candidates that the attorneys and all the respected individuals of our community have in good faith evaluated and found to have superior credentials, judgment and integrity?” he said.